Sunday, May 11, 2014

"Freedom" (Author: Zenos Frudakis)

Zenos’ statement about his vision of the sculpture

I wanted to create a sculpture almost anyone, regardless of their
background, could look at and instantly recognize that it is about the idea of
struggling to break free. This sculpture is about the struggle for achievement
of freedom through the creative process.

Although for me, this feeling sprang from a particular personal situation,
I was conscious that it was a universal desire with almost everyone; that need
to escape from some situation – be it an internal struggle or an adversarial
circumstance, and to be free from it.

I began this work in a very traditional sculptural manner by creating a
small model in clay called a macquette. The purpose of beginning in this manner
is to capture the large action and major proportions of the figure within the
overall design without any details to detract from the big idea. Another reason
for not having details and for working on a small model only a few inches in
height is that the small armature within it, holding the clay, is more easily
manipulated, allowing for much greater flexibility in developing a concept. For
example, an arm, a leg or a head can be pushed around without any concern for
obliterating details, such as a nose or a finger.

The macquette is the original mass of clay where a concept is born and from
which it grows and develops. This was important later when I enlarged the
sculpture from several inches long to 20 feet long, and I retained in the
larger work a sense that all the conceptual material, its forms, focus and
development sprang from this rough idea. The work metamorphosized, in the way
that we do.

Although there are four figures represented, the work is really one figure
moving from left to right. The composition develops from left to right
beginning with a kind of mummy/death like captive figure locked into its
background. In the second frame, the figure, reminiscent of Michaelangelo’s Rebellious
Slave, begins to stir and struggle to escape. The figure in the third
frame has torn himself from the wall that held him captive and is stepping out,
reaching for freedom. In the fourth frame, the figure is entirely free,
victorious, arms outstretched, completely away from the wall and from the grave
space he left behind. He evokes an escape from his own mortality.

Zenos Frudakis

In working on the large scale sculpture, I was satisfied that those who
drove by getting a quick look at it would see the big picture: that it was about
escape. I was also concerned that those who worked in the building and who
passed the sculpture frequently would have something more to see. There was a
lot of empty space between the figures on the wall, which I saw as an
opportunity to develop further ideas.

It was important to me that the sculpture have more than one theme going on
at once. One of the other major ideas incorporated in the work is that the very
process of creating the sculpture is clearly revealed in the work itself. The
maquette is cast into the sculpture in the lower left hand corner. In the lower
right corner is the cast of the sculptor’s hand holding the sculpture tool with
two rolls of clay also cast in bronze. Throughout the background of the Wall, I
have rolled out the clay and pressed it with my fingers so that my fingerprints
are all over the sculpture. I have not hidden how I have made the piece. In
fact, the whole idea of the macquette is enlarged so that all the figures in
the background look like a giant macquette. And at the same time, as the
figures move from left to right, I have shown how figures are developed when
you are sculpting from the rough to the more finished product.

Elements of the sculpture trade beside the tools that are cast into the
sculpture are calipers both for their use in measuring and their reference to
Protagoras’ words “Man is the measure of all things.”

Also cast into the sculpture is an anatomical man, traditionally used as a
reference by sculptors. Many of the heads and figures on the wall, some in the
round and some in relief, are shown partially sculpted, revealing the process
of creation.

Something else I have done with the sculpture is that I have created a one
man show of my work. I have always admired Rodin’s Gates of Hell.
I similarly thought I would incorporate many sculptures into the wall where it
was suitable.

Like T.S. Eliot and other artists, I have put many personal elements in my
work. My friend Philip, a sculptor who died of AIDS, created a work that I
included in Freedom because he often expressed his wish to have it in a public
space. He did not live long enough to accomplish this himself. My cat, who
lived with me for 20 years, my mother, father, and my self portrait are in the
work. It is obvious which face is mine because there is a ballooned phrase
coming from my mouth with the word “freedom”, written backwards, making it
clear that the face was sculpted in a mirror. I see the whole Wall sculpture as
a kind of illusion akin to Alice’s Through the Looking Glass.

The sculpture contains an original Duane Hanson -- a bronze cast of my own
hands that Duane cast for me as a gift.

Much of what I did with this sculpture has to do with taking traditional
forms and combining them in non-traditional ways, forming a postmodern
sensibility. For example, I dropped a wax cast of my father’s bust from two or
three feet in height so that it broke into large pieces. I cast those into the
wall in a fractured manner over another face, an old work I found in a vat of
clay purchased from a sculptor who had long ago died.

I have hidden many things in the background for people who see the
sculpture more than once to discover, such as a cast of coins – a nickel and
two pennies, another nickel and two pennies, and two quarters and a penny.
These represent not only the relationship between money and art, but the
numerals 7-7-51, my birth date.

It is important to me that the public interact with the sculpture, not just
intellectually and emotionally but physically. I have created a space in which
I have written “stand here” so that people can place themselves
inside the sculpture and become part of the composition.

Zenos Frudakis

In the end, this sculpture is a statement about the artist’s attempt to
free himself from the constraints of mortality through a long lasting creative
form.

DECONSTRUCTING HISTORY

Breathing Forgiveness

"It’s interesting that Jesus identifies forgiveness with breathing, the one thing that we have done constantly since we were born and will do until we die. He says God’s forgiveness is like breathing. Forgiveness is not apparently something God does, it is who God is."